Reading some of the opposition to 64-bit distros on the DVD, I am seriously wondering if some are under the impression that the DVD cannot have both 32 and 64 bit material on it at the same time. Thus we have seen suggestions for two disks, or separate subscriptions for one disc or the other, or 32 and 64 bit on opposite sides.

It seems perfectly simple to me that we could have a mix of distros each month with some, the heavyweights (eg Centos, Suse, Debian) in 64 bit form and the lighter more newbie oriented ones (eg Mepis, Mint, Puppy) in 32 bit form. On the same DVD.

The pensioner with older 32-bit hardware has a point, but I bet they are not running Centos. Neither am I.

Old hardware is cited a lot, and I am running some of that myself. I opened a fileserver of mine for the first time in years and found that it still had an ISA graphics card! In daily use, but normally headless. Can anyone here beat that? As well as a 16 year old floppy drive and a Pentium CPU. I am typing now on an IBM AT keyboard, 20? years old. In fact I am an old equipment freak myself, so I would be as concerned as anyone if 32-bit were dropped.

OTOH 64-bit kit is hardly "new" stuff. I first ran a 64-bit distro few years ago on a motherboard and CPU which I had bought second hand from eBay at the time. So let's have a mixture on the DVD FTTB please.

I can understand why people don't want to give up 32-bit but we must remember that not everyone is using old hardware and while there are many people who install Linux as a way to breathe new life into older hardware that won't run the latest version of Windows not all of us fall into that category.

I believe from some of the comments in the forum over the past months, and from some of the letters in the mag, that some guys are under the misapprehension that a whole disc must be 32 or 64-bit exclusively. No direct evidence, but it is implied by the unnecessary suggestions that there be two cover DVDs, or different sides, or even two different versions of the magazine with a 32 or 64 bit disc on them.

Also, the sheer vehemence of the letters and posts against the idea of including any 64-bit distros on the disc suggests that their authors believe that it would mean the end of 32-bit anything, like the frequent "64-bit will be of no use to me" and "my older hardware would be useless". The passion of these appeals takes me aback. You don't get people writing like that against (for example) music or photo album apps because "they will be of no use" to them. I have no interest in music myself, but I accept it as part of the scene and I don't write begging the editor not to include music apps.

It would not be the first time that arguments have gone on at cross-purposes on the basis of misunderstandings.